


A Clicking Noise

by skanque



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 04:19:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12880047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skanque/pseuds/skanque
Summary: An ordinary lunchtime in South Park, though Craig has a secret he's not too keen on revealing.





	A Clicking Noise

There’s just a flash of silver between his teeth as Craig takes another bite of his meatball sub, throws his head back slightly to wolf it down like a wild dog.

Tweek watches as he takes a small notch out of his own grilled cheese, chews slowly as it turns to paste on his tongue. He downs it with chocolate milk, a mistake, it’s too sweet, too cloying on his tongue. He watches the line of Craig’s throat as he swallows, glances at Tweek out of the corner of his eye, and blinks in a way that makes something pass between them, something comforting.

There’s that bright flash again as Craig goes in for another bite.

The noise seems to fade out in the cafeteria in that moment, then instantly fade back in, like someone’s playing with the volume knob in his brain. He thinks, maybe, he’s seeing things, because that’s happened more than once. He digs his fingers into his pants and squeezes his eyes shut for a second and remembers what they said at the clinic.

_If you know it’s not real, then the hallucination is harmless._

There’s a clicking noise as Craig tears open the carton of chocolate milk on his tray. Like a marble on tile.

They’d all played marbles, once, as kids. It was for about a week. It’s a blur, like most childhood memories in South Park, a bizzare blur remembering the start of something happening, clear and vivid, but then by the end the memory is usually a mob riot or a fire or nuclear war without anything to connect the two, or any memory of what happened in between.

_Click. Click. Click._

“And that is why,” Cartman is saying across the table, “we are all having tittysex with ghosts in our sleep.”

Kyle snorts. Clyde looks interested, but then notices nobody else does, and quickly turns his attention back to reading the nutritional table on his Diet Pepsi. 

Butters, as always, plays right into Eric’s hand. “If my parents found out I was sexing a ghost,” he says, “I think they’d ground me.”

“You’re sixteen, Butters,” Cartman says. He tears open a second bag of Cheezy Poofs and shoves four into his mouth. “Yoo haff too wage agains’ the maseen.”

“What?”

“You have to rage against the machine, Butters, or they will take that which you most hold dear.”

“The ghosts will?”

“He means your parents,” Stan says. “If you’re sixteen, you can’t get grounded anymore.”

“Your mom never grounded you in the first place,” Kyle says, leaning over Stan to talk at Cartman. “You don’t know anything about being grounded.”

“Yeah, because MY mom is kewl.”

Nobody really feels like responding to that, which is probably for the better. There’s just the silent, wet sound of chewing, sodas being swallowed. 

Tweek pops open the top on his thermos of iced coffee, sucks down a sip. It’s only gotten stronger since this morning, and it numbs his tongue. It’s so bitter it sends a shiver down his spine. His pinky twitches. He feels it brush Craig’s, and it only takes a heartbeat for Craig to brush it back with his.

Happy accident.

“Dude. DUDE! Craig, what IS that?”

“It’s nothing.”

“No,” Kyle says, “no Cartman’s right, I saw it too. Did you get braces?”

Craig flashes his teeth. “No braces. Nothing.”

“C’mon dude, just show us,” Stan says. “Don’t be an asshole.”

“Yeah, Craig’s being an asshole, right Kenny?”

“Just show them, Craig,” Token sighs. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s not their business,” Craig says.

And it’s then, he realizes, he hears it. When Craig talks. The clicking.

Craig sticks out his tongue, half-full of macerated meatball sandwich, and flips Cartman off. “Happy?” 

“Dude Craig, gross, I couldn’t even see it with your gross meatball barf in the way!”

Craig sighs. His hot hand brushes Tweek’s again, and Tweek realizes he’s been tapping his palm uncontrollably against the lunch table bench. He grabs his forearm to steady it. Craig takes five gulps of chocolate milk, opens his mouth, and sticks his tongue out again.

Even without his mouth set in a firm line, his eyes make it clear he’s nothing less than fully irritated.

It’s there, right in the center. A sliver ball that glints in the florescent cafeteria light. Craig arches his tongue up and curls it over so they can see it’s a barbell that goes all the way through. Then he snakes his tongue back through his teeth and snaps his jaw firmly shut. 

“Happy?”

“Fuck you Craig, when the fuck did you get that?”

Craig takes another bite of meatball sandwich and squeezes Tweek’s trembling hand with his own steady, hot one. He squeezes his own forearm tighter, because he’s sure Craig can feel the steady twitching. His palm’s stopped, but the index finger is still tapping haphazardly against the bench.

“Last night.”

“Last night?”

“Last night,” Token says, “we went down to that tattoo parlour downtown. Craig had birthday money.”

“Mmhm, and what’d you get Token hm? Scrotum piercing?”

“Shut up Cartman.”

“I will find out,” Cartman says, balling up his empty Cheezy Poof bag and shooting it towards the trash can. He misses. “Do not think I won’t.”

“Just tell him,” Clyde says, “or we’ll have to listen to him not shut up about it.”

“He doesn’t need to know.”

“Do you want him to keep dogging us?”

“He has the attention span of a second-grader.”

“I’m right here, you guys, this isn’t cool.”

“Shut up Cartman.”

“Craig,” Stan says, and his voice cuts through Token and Clyde’s bickering and Cartman’s annoying mouth-open chewing, “why’d you do the tongue?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Can you shoot stuff out of the hole?” Cartman asks, attention suddenly pulled away from Token’s possible piercing on his whatever.

“It’s none of your business,” he says again.

Kenny laughs, but it’s half-muffled by his parka, which is slightly unzipped to make room for his peanut butter sandwich. “You know why girls get tongue piercings.”

“Yeah but Craig’s not a girl, just a pussy.”

Craig doesn’t even bother to flip that off, it’s so low-effort. Tweek finishes his grilled cheese, gnaws it down to the crusts, which he leaves on his plate. His palm is getting sweaty against Craig’s, and his vision is starting to blur. There’s an aura on the edge.

More coffee. He chugs as much as he can down without taking a breath, lays his head on the table. The plastic is cool underneath his sweaty cheek.

“Wait,” Butters says, “why do girls pierce their tongues Kenny? Is it a girl secret?”

“Learn to fucking Google it Butters,” Cartman sighs, “Jesus Christ.”

He glances up through the side of his eye at Craig, who’s deep in conversation with Token over something on Token’s phone. The light glints off Craig’s tongue again when he goes for a french fry.

His ears begin to buzz.

There’s a noise again, but tapping, something on wood. His arm is shaking. It’s his own finger again. His foot starts to move with it too, the sense of a current that’s concentrated in the center of his chest. His head is racing. 

Craig had classes on the other side of the building this morning, and they hadn’t talked on the way to school.

He hadn’t noticed, and Craig hadn’t told.

Maybe it just wasn’t important.

But somehow, somehow, it feels like it is, and it reminds him of the things he wonders about that Craig might not also tell him. 

He’s told Craig everything since they were ten, even things nobody else believes him about. Craig believes him about Underpants Gnomes and meth coffee and the fact that he swears, yes, the real Kim-Jong Un is following his twitter on a stealth account, even if Craig swears up and down it has to just be a bot.

He wonders what Stripe #4 will say about this, Craig doing body mods. 

Maybe nothing. He’s mellowed out in his old age.

“We could pass a world record,” Cartman’s saying, “and make a million dollars with Craig’s tongue hole.”

“No thanks.”

“A _million dollars_ , Craig. You could get ten tongue piercings. And twinks. So many twinks, Craig.”

“I’m fine.”

Tap tap tap.

“Don’t you want twinks, Craig? Twinks and a million dollars?”

“What’s a twink, fellas?”

_Tap tap tap._

“It’s a gay thing, Butters. Gays love them.”

_Tap tap tap-taptaptaptaptaptap._

“Oh, I see.” Butters pushes his green beans around with a fork. “Why do girls get tongue piercings, Kenny?”

Tweek raises his cheek from the now-warm spot on the cafeteria table, opens his thermos, swallows back more coffee. The aura dancing on the edge of his vision is starting to fade out. There’s a gagging sound. Kenny doesn’t answer Butters. He’s choking on a hot dog. Kyle thumps him on the back hard enough that it flies out halfway across the cafeteria and hits Scott Malkinson square in the eye.

Kenny collapses on the table, gasping for air. Butters pats his back.

“Fuck, dude,” he gasps, scratching at the collar of his parka, unzipping it down to the middle of his chest. “Thanks Kyle.”

The bell rings. He shoves his thermos in the canvas bag near his foot, and Craig takes his hand, pulls him up. 

Kenny’s still laying on the table, Butters gently patting his back. Butters hands him a half-empty can of Mr. Pibb. He downs it so fast he’ll probably choke again.

He doesn’t stay long enough to see it if it happens. Craig still has his sweaty palm in an iron grip.

Craig’s dragging him down the hall to their lockers. “Hey,” he says, undoing his combination lock with only two fingers, “walk me to class.”

_Click. Click._

“O-okay.”

While Craig is half-inside his locker searching for his Bio textbook Tweek reaches for the bag at his own hip, downs another long draught of coffee from the thermos. He shivers again. Craig squeezes his hand with the arm that’s not occupied with grabbing books from his locker.

“C-Craig,” he says, softly.

“Yeah babe?”

“I-I need to know,” he says, “why you got a tongue piercing?”

He tries to look Craig straight in the eye as he says it, but his neck spasms and at the last moment he blinks, his eye squeezes shut and small stars start dancing across his vision in the middle of the hallway. His vision shimmers. The onset of a coffee withdrawl migraine. He downs more clumsily with the hand that’s not attached to Craig.

“Is it important?”

“I just got curious,” he says when he pulls his lips off the thermos. “You never said you wanted one.”

 _Click._ “Do you know,” _click_ , “why girls, “ _click_ , “get tongue piercings?”

“N-No.”

In a rare moment, Craig smiles. “Today after school,” he says, “we can go to my house. And I’ll show you.”

He finishes off the coffee left in his thermos, tucks the empty cup back in his bag. Another shiver shoots through him. 

The way Craig looks at him, mouth mischievous, lips slightly parted, the light glints off that silver ball. Tweek shivers again, stronger than before, from the top of his head down his spine. His fingers twitch, and his head goes a little dizzy.

Craig squeezes his hand knowingly, pulls him down the hall to class.

The shiver settles itself hotly between his thighs, and he has a sudden moment of clarity.

Ah, that’s not the coffee.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm not sure if it was a common assumption, but back when I was in school there were rumors about tongue piercings, performing oral, and what that said about girls who would get them. (I'll leave it to you to put 2+2 but supposedly it enhances it, according to said rumors.) Are they true? I can't say. But that was the idea behind this, Craig with a secret piercing that holds some implications for Tweek...


End file.
